Jennifer Goetz

BIOGRAPHY

Before joining the Centre College faculty, Jennifer Goetz was a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa and taught at Middlebury College in Vermont. Dr. Goetz joined the Centre College faculty in 2011, promoted to associate professor in 2016, and promoted to professor in 2025. During her sabbatical in 2018, she was a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. While at Centre, Dr. Goetz has been awarded the Stodghill Research Professorship, named a Centre Faculty Scholar, and Marlene and David Grissom Associate Professor of Science. In addition to her teaching, Dr. Goetz has served the college in many roles including Chair of Psychology, Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Fellow, and proud mentor for 15th cohort of Centre Posse. She is currently the Chair of Division III (Mathematics and Sciences).

Dr. Goetz is a social and cultural psychologist whose research specializes in emotional experience and culture. She studies how social, cultural, and evolutionary factors shape how people experience and express emotions like sympathy and compassion, particularly in the US and China. Her research on these topics has appeared in Psychological Bulletin, Emotion, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and the Oxford Handbook on Compassion Science, among others. In her early work, Dr. Goetz studied human-robot interaction to examine how humans anthropomorphize robots and respond to them as they would humans. 

In a more recent line of research, Dr. Goetz studies racial bias and how to reduce it. Along with her students, Dr. Goetz studies racial climate and experiences of students of color, beliefs around implicit bias, and the usefulness of interventions to educate individuals about racial bias. She and her Centre College students have presented this work at a variety of regional and national conferences, including the Kentucky Academy of Sciences, the Midwestern Psychological Association, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Coupled with this research, Dr. Goetz is dedicated to making her classroom and Centre College more inclusive and more equitable spaces. To this end, she designed and led a 7-session workshop titled The Inclusive Classroom Series: Science & Math Edition in which Centre STEM faculty and administration learned about and developed methods for making their own classrooms more inclusive spaces. In summer 2020, she also organized two multi-day online workshops led by Truth Hunter of Connecticut College. The first was #WeAreInThisTogether: Supporting Our Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic. The second was Supporting Underrepresented Faculty and Staff. Finally, Dr. Goetz has co-led and organized a variety of learning communities and workshops for students, staff, and faculty on Anti-Racism, Inclusive Pedagogy, and Implicit Bias and hosted experts on topics of racism and identity, including Dr. Jeanine Abrams McLean (Fair Count), Dr. Christopher Marshburn (University of Kentucky), Dr. Elizabeth Page-Gould (University of Toronto), and award-winning author Shannon Gibney. 

PUBLICATIONS

• Goetz, J. L. & Simon-Thomas, E. (2024). Compassion: An Evolutionary Account. In L. Al-Shawaf, & T. Shackelford (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions, Oxford University Press: New York.  https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-evolution-and-the-emotions-9780197544754?cc=us&lang=en&#
• Goetz, J. L. (2023). Compassion and Heroism. In S.T. Allison, J.K. Beggan, & G.R. Goethals (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies, Springer Publishing: New York.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17125-3_59-1
• Goetz, J. L. & *Halgren, S. (2020). Closeness or compassion? Relatedness and causal control influence helping via distinct pathways. The Journal of Social Psychology, 160, 479-495.  https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1681352
• Goetz, J. L., & Peng, K. (2019). Sympathy and responses to suffering: Similarity and variation in China and the United States. Emotion, 19, 320-333.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000443
• Goetz, J. L. & Simon-Thomas, E. (2017). The landscape of compassion: Definitions and scientific approaches. In E. Seppälä, E. Simon-Thomas, S. L. Brown, M. C. Worline, C. D. Cameron, and J. R. Doty (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook on Compassion Science. (pp. 3-15). Oxford University Press: New York. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190464684.013.1
• Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 351-374.  https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018807
• Goetz, J. L., Kiesler, S., & Powers, A. (2003, October). Matching robot appearance and behavior to tasks to improve human-robot cooperation. Proceedings of the 12th Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication. RO-MAN 2003, Millbrae, CA. DOI: 10.1109/ROMAN.2003.1251796 Winner of Best Paper Award.
   

COURSES TAUGHT

• Cultural Psychology
• Motivation and Emotion
• Psychology of Race and Ethnicity
• Experimental Methods
• Students mentor in independent research